1,651 research outputs found
Clonal spread of SCCmec type IV methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus between community and hospital
ABSTRACTThe staphylococcal chromosome cassette (SCC)mec types of 382 hospital-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (HA-MRSA) isolates in Taiwan were analysed over a 7-year period (1999–2005). There was an abrupt increase in SCCmec type IV in HA-MRSA during 2005. The molecular epidemiology of a subset (n = 69) of HA-MRSA isolates with SCCmec types III, IV or V was characterised and compared with that of community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) (n = 26, collected during 2005). Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis revealed three major pulsotypes (A, B and C) and 15 minor clones. Pulsotypes B and C, which contained isolates carrying SCCmec types IV and V, respectively, included both CA-MRSA and HA-MRSA isolates. Among 24 toxin genes analysed, five genes had significant differential distribution between CA-MRSA and SCCmec type III HA-MRSA. Furthermore, among SCCmec type IV isolates, the seb gene was detected more commonly in HA-MRSA. Analysis of representative members of the three major pulsotypes by multilocus sequence typing revealed two sequence types (STs), namely ST239 (SCCmec III) and ST59 (SCCmec IV or SCCmec V). This suggests that ST59:SCCmec IV, which is usually community-acquired, has become an important nosocomial pathogen in the hospital studied
Comparison of Temperature-Dependent Hadronic Current Correlation Functions Calculated in Lattice Simulations of QCD and with a Chiral Lagrangian Model
The Euclidean-time hadronic current correlation functions, and
, of pseudoscalar and vector currents have recently been
calculated in lattice simulations of QCD and have been used to obtain the
corresponding spectral functions. We have used the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL)
model to calculate such spectral functions, as well as the Euclidean-time
correlators, and have made a comparison to the lattice results for the
correlators. We find evidence for the type of temperature dependence of the NJL
coupling parameters that we have used in previous studies of the mesonic
confinement-deconfinement transition. We also see that the spectral functions
obtained when using the maximum-entropy-method (MEM) and the lattice data
differ from the spectral functions that we calculate in our chiral model.
However, our results for the Euclidean-time correlators are in general
agreement with the lattice results, with better agreement when our
temperature-dependent coupling parameters are used than when
temperature-independent parameters are used for the NJL model. We also discuss
some additional evidence for the utility of temperature-dependent coupling
parameters for the NJL model. For example, if the constituent quark mass at T=0
is in the chiral limit, the transition temperature is for the NJL model with a standard momentum cutoff parameter. (If a
Gaussian momentum cutoff is used, we find in the chiral limit,
with at T=0.) The introduction of a weak temperature dependence
for the coupling constant will move the value of into the range 150-170
MeV, which is more in accord with what is found in lattice simulations of QCD
with dynamical quarks
Electron-hydrogen scattering in Faddeev-Merkuriev integral equation approach
Electron-hydrogen scattering is studied in the Faddeev-Merkuriev integral
equation approach. The equations are solved by using the Coulomb-Sturmian
separable expansion technique. We present - and -wave scattering and
reactions cross sections up to the threshold.Comment: 2 eps figure
Resonant-state solution of the Faddeev-Merkuriev integral equations for three-body systems with Coulomb potentials
A novel method for calculating resonances in three-body Coulombic systems is
proposed. The Faddeev-Merkuriev integral equations are solved by applying the
Coulomb-Sturmian separable expansion method. The S-state
resonances up to threshold are calculated.Comment: 6 pages, 2 ps figure
Differentiating Intracellular from Extracellular Alkaline Phosphatase Activity in Soil by Sonication
Differentiating intracellular from extracellular enzyme activity is important in soil enzymology, but not easy. Here, we report on an adjusted sonication method for the separation of intracellular from extracellular phosphatase activity in soil. Under optimal sonication conditions [soil:water ratio = 1/8 (w/v) and power density = 15 watt ml(-1)], the activity of alkaline phosphomonoesterase (phosphatase) in a Haplic Cambisol soil increased with sonication time in two distinct steps. A first plateau of enzyme activity was reached between 60 and 100 s, and a second higher plateau after 300 s. We also found that sonication for 100 s under optimal conditions activated most (about 80%) of the alkaline phosphatase that was added to an autoclaved soil, while total bacteria number was not affected. Sonication for 300 s reduced the total bacteria number by three orders of magnitude but had no further effects on enzyme activity. Our results indicate that the first plateau of alkaline phosphatase activity was derived from extracellular enzymes attached to soil particles, and the second plateau to the combination of extracellular and intracellular enzymes after cell lysis. We conclude that our adjusted sonication method may be an alternative to the currently used physiological and chloroform-fumigation methods for differentiating intracellular from extracellular phosphatase activity in soil. Further testing is needed to find out whether this holds for other soil types
Fluctuations of an evaporating black hole from back reaction of its Hawking radiation: Questioning a premise in earlier work
This paper delineates the first steps in a systematic quantitative study of
the spacetime fluctuations induced by quantum fields in an evaporating black
hole. We explain how the stochastic gravity formalism can be a useful tool for
that purpose within a low-energy effective field theory approach to quantum
gravity. As an explicit example we apply it to the study of the
spherically-symmetric sector of metric perturbations around an evaporating
black hole background geometry. For macroscopic black holes we find that those
fluctuations grow and eventually become important when considering sufficiently
long periods of time (of the order of the evaporation time), but well before
the Planckian regime is reached. In addition, the assumption of a simple
correlation between the fluctuations of the energy flux crossing the horizon
and far from it, which was made in earlier work on spherically-symmetric
induced fluctuations, is carefully analyzed and found to be invalid. Our
analysis suggests the existence of an infinite amplitude for the fluctuations
of the horizon as a three-dimensional hypersurface. We emphasize the need for
understanding and designing operational ways of probing quantum metric
fluctuations near the horizon and extracting physically meaningful information.Comment: 10 pages, REVTeX; minor changes, a few references added and a brief
discussion of their relevance included. To appear in the proceedings of the
10th Peyresq meeting. Dedicated to Rafael Sorkin on the occasion of his 60th
birthda
Cross-Correlation Studies with CMB Polarization Maps
The free-electron population during the reionized epoch rescatters CMB
temperature quadrupole and generates a now well-known polarization signal at
large angular scales. While this contribution has been detected in the
temperature-polarization cross power spectrum measured with WMAP data, due to
the large cosmic variance associated with anisotropy measurements at tens of
degree angular scales only limited information related to reionization, such as
the optical depth to electron scattering, can be extracted. The inhomogeneities
in the free-electron population lead to an additional secondary polarization
anisotropy contribution at arcminute scales. While the fluctuation amplitude,
relative to dominant primordial fluctuations, is small, we suggest that a
cross-correlation between arcminute scale CMB polarization data and a tracer
field of the high redshift universe, such as through fluctuations captured by
the 21 cm neutral Hydrogen background or those in the infrared background
related to first proto-galaxies, may allow one to study additional details
related to reionization. For this purpose, we discuss an optimized higher order
correlation measurement, in the form of a three-point function, including
information from large angular scale CMB temperature anisotropies in addition
to arcminute scale polarization signal related to inhomogeneous reionization.
We suggest that the proposed bispectrum can be measured with a substantial
signal-to-noise ratio and does not require all-sky maps of CMB polarization or
that of the tracer field. A measurement such as the one proposed may allow one
to establish the epoch when CMB polarization related to reionization is
generated and to address if the universe was reionized once or twice.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures; Version in press with Phys. Rev.
Determination of optimal ultrasound planes for the initialisation of image registration during endoscopic ultrasound-guided procedures
Purpose
Navigation of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS)-guided procedures of the upper gastrointestinal (GI) system can be technically challenging due to the small fields-of-view of ultrasound and optical devices, as well as the anatomical variability and limited number of orienting landmarks during navigation. Co-registration of an EUS device and a pre-procedure 3D image can enhance the ability to navigate. However, the fidelity of this contextual information depends on the accuracy of registration. The purpose of this study was to develop and test the feasibility of a simulation-based planning method for pre-selecting patient-specific EUS-visible anatomical landmark locations to maximise the accuracy and robustness of a feature-based multimodality registration method.
Methods
A registration approach was adopted in which landmarks are registered to anatomical structures segmented from the pre-procedure volume. The predicted target registration errors (TREs) of EUS-CT registration were estimated using simulated visible anatomical landmarks and a Monte Carlo simulation of landmark localisation error. The optimal planes were selected based on the 90th percentile of TREs, which provide a robust and more accurate EUS-CT registration initialisation. The method was evaluated by comparing the accuracy and robustness of registrations initialised using optimised planes versus non-optimised planes using manually segmented CT images and simulated (n=9) or retrospective clinical (n=1) EUS landmarks.
Results
The results show a lower 90th percentile TRE when registration is initialised using the optimised planes compared with a non-optimised initialisation approach (p value <0.01).
Conclusions
The proposed simulation-based method to find optimised EUS planes and landmarks for EUS-guided procedures may have the potential to improve registration accuracy. Further work will investigate applying the technique in a clinical setting
Quark and Nucleon Self-Energy in Dense Matter
In a recent work we introduced a nonlocal version of the
Nambu--Jona-Lasinio(NJL) model that was designed to generate a quark
self-energy in Euclidean space that was similar to that obtained in lattice
simulations of QCD. In the present work we carry out related calculations in
Minkowski space, so that we can study the effects of the significant vector and
axial-vector interactions that appear in extended NJL models and which play an
important role in the study of the , and mesons. We study
the modification of the quark self-energy in the presence of matter and find
that our model reproduces the behavior of the quark condensate predicted by the
model-independent relation , where is the
pion-nucleon sigma term and is the density of nuclear matter. (Since
we do not include a model of confinement, our study is restricted to the
analysis of quark matter. We provide some discussion of the modification of the
above formula for quark matter.) The inclusion of a quark current mass leads to
a second-order phase transition for the restoration of chiral symmetry. That
restoration is about 80% at twice nuclear matter density for the model
considered in this work. We also find that the part of the quark self-energy
that is explicitly dependent upon density has a strong negative Lorentz-scalar
term and a strong positive Lorentz-vector term, which is analogous to the
self-energy found for the nucleon in nuclear matter when one makes use of the
Dirac equation for the nucleon. In this work we calculate the nucleon self
-energy in nuclear matter using our model of the quark self-energy and obtain
satisfactory results.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, revte
Fast, exact CMB power spectrum estimation for a certain class of observational strategies
We describe a class of observational strategies for probing the anisotropies
in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) where the instrument scans on rings
which can be combined into an n-torus, the {\em ring torus}. This class has the
remarkable property that it allows exact maximum likelihood power spectrum
estimation in of order operations (if the size of the data set is )
under circumstances which would previously have made this analysis intractable:
correlated receiver noise, arbitrary asymmetric beam shapes and far side lobes,
non-uniform distribution of integration time on the sky and partial sky
coverage. This ease of computation gives us an important theoretical tool for
understanding the impact of instrumental effects on CMB observables and hence
for the design and analysis of the CMB observations of the future. There are
members of this class which closely approximate the MAP and Planck satellite
missions. We present a numerical example where we apply our ring torus methods
to a simulated data set from a CMB mission covering a 20 degree patch on the
sky to compute the maximum likelihood estimate of the power spectrum
with unprecedented efficiency.Comment: RevTeX, 14 pages, 5 figures. A full resolution version of Figure 1
and additional materials are at http://feynman.princeton.edu/~bwandelt/RT
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